The invention relates to the field of cutting tools and in particular to a process for manufacturing gear and spline cutters that can be made quickly and inexpensively from metal stock that is on hand. Or mass produced using conventional processes and materials.
In normal practice gear cutters are made rather expensively as a cutting tool to be used in a horizontal arbor type milling machine that rotates the tool. Such cutters have their uses as they are long lasting and of fairly high quality. One drawback of such tools is that because they are time consuming and expensive to produce and, hence, a company that markets such cutting tools cannot expect to wait for an order to come in and then custom order the cutter for that size of gear. Rather, an entire stock of such cutters must be kept on hand.
The idea of the present invention is to avoid the need to keep and maintain a supply of expensive cutters in stock but rather to disclose a less expensive process for making such gear cutters when they are needed. The manufacturer of such gear cutters will be capable of producing the cutters so inexpensively that even small companies or companies which only use such cutters on a limited basis could afford to keep a broad range of sizes of them on hand.
The applicant""s manufacturing process can cut the cost of producing such gear cutters to about ⅓ that of state of the art arbor type gear cutters; given the approximate demands of supply and demand in the present day and age.
The invention is a process for producing quick and inexpensive gear cutters made of steel or carbide that are made for the gear type that is to be produced by the cutters. Cylindrical shaped blanks of tool steel or other suitable materials of are chosen for a size appropriate for the task and are then machined in order to remove portions in order to form cutting edges for a spindle driven tool having a shank at one end and series of cutting edges at the other. The series of cutting edges should come to a tip opposite that of the shank which, at the tip, are of a suitable geometry to allow the tool to cut at its center.
The parameters of the cutting edge are chosen by a process that calculates the parameters of the gear that is to be cut with the cutter, and then a proper profile for the blades of the cutter is determined. Computers may assist in directing the movements of the machine that does the cutting of flutes which form the cutting edges. Further finishing steps, such as hardening and tempering and adding a flat to the shank of the cutter to facilitate driving the cutter in the machine spindle then complete the manufacturing process.
The finished product is a gear cutter in an end mill format type of tool having a shank for being driven in a spindle type of machine. Such cutters are used to machine gear teeth and splines as required on machinery parts and components.
Such gear cutters can be turned out in this manner in a fast and cost effective manner so that suppliers who need certain types of gears cut can have their orders filled by manufacturers who do not have to have stock an entire set of gear cutters of different sizes. Instead, a firm that needs an order of a gears of a certain size can simply and in a request based on the size of the gears to be cut and an appropriate cutter can be quickly produced with at a cost ⅓ or less that of conventional gear cutters.
It is purpose of the invention to produce spindle driven gear cutters that can be made faster and cheaper than conventional arbor driven gear cutters and allow for the custom production of such gears on an affordable basis instead of having to stock expensive arbor-driven gear cutters.
Another advantage is to produce gear cutters that can be used in spindle driven machines that in turn allows for faster and easier cutting of gears, since the use of spindle driven tools allows for easier and faster centering of the cutting tool vis a vis the gear blank.
Another advantage is that gear cutters can be cut out cylindrical blanks and thus use less material (such as tool steel, carbide etc.) in the production process.
Other objectives will be understood by those skilled in the art once the invention is shown and described.